


come on, come up, said the swallow to the sky

by eneiryu



Series: we know all sorts of things we don't believe [6]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, POV Liam Dunbar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 06:28:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23846743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eneiryu/pseuds/eneiryu
Summary: Liam, through it all.
Relationships: Liam Dunbar/Theo Raeken
Series: we know all sorts of things we don't believe [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1177073
Comments: 59
Kudos: 249





	come on, come up, said the swallow to the sky

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again, everyone. Happy continued quarantine. I continue to survive by telling stories, clearly. Join me 'round the virtual campfire.
> 
> A very, _very_ delayed credit first to [manonlemelon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/manonlemelon/pseuds/manonlemelon), who asked for this an embarrassingly long time ago, and second to [Insert_Creative_Name_Here](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Insert_Creative_Name_Here), who asked for it like a week ago. By your powers combined, I finally got off my ass and wrote it.
> 
> Much love to the ever eagle-eyed [snaeken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snaeken) for the beta read.
> 
> Finally, I recently got a question asking if I accept prompts. The answer is _yes_. As some of you know, my prompt list is embarrassingly long. As those same people also know, I have no self-control: give me _all_ the prompts!

Liam’s lucky he’s a werewolf, because he isn’t wearing his seatbelt when Derek slams on his brakes and jerks his Toyota to the side of the road.

“Mother _fucker_ ,” Liam wheezes, having crashed _hard_ into the passenger seat. _Jesus_ , he’d unhooked his seatbelt for a _second_ while he reached into the back to look for something. 

But Derek doesn’t chastise him for his lack of road safety _or_ his language, because Derek is already out of the car, his door left hanging open and the car’s electronics loudly complaining because his keys are still in the dash. Liam darts a look at Corey, who darts a look right back, and then both of them scramble for their own doors as they throw themselves out after him.

He’s off to the side of the road, curled over Lydia, who’s—who’s _screaming_ ; Liam comes to a slow halt, staring. Looking up, he sees that Scott’s stood frozen just to the side of the Jeep, and Stiles is literally half-in and half-out of the passenger seat, his own phone pressed to his ear. _What the hell is happening_ , Liam wonders, too many conversations happening in too many places for him to follow, and then he whips around, because _Corey’s_ phone rings.

“Mason?” Corey ventures hesitantly, instinctively wary, and Liam feels his heart drop into his _shoes_.

Mason starts talking. He does it fast, his words tripping one over the other, and he does it _shakily_ ; his throat has to be so, so tight to make his voice tremble like that. Liam stares at Corey, whose eyes slowly rise to stare back.

 _There was an attack on Derek’s building_ , Mason tells Corey.

 _Theo got me and Nolan and Alec out safely_ , Mason tells Corey, and then he says, _but…_

Mason doesn’t continue, immediately; Liam can hear him swallow even standing a few feet away from Corey, and through the shit quality of the call. But Liam doesn’t _need_ Mason to continue. And neither, it seems, does Corey; his pulse does an almost _loop-de-loop_ , fast and then tanking and then fast again, and his scent snarls itself up in such a tight knot that it gives Liam an immediate, visceral headache.

Or maybe that’s the knowledge that lodges itself high up under Liam’s ribcage: _there was an attack on Derek’s building, and Theo got me and Nolan and Alec out safely, but…_

Liam knows what comes after that _but_. He _doesn’t_ know why he lunges at Corey.

But lunge he does. “Mason says _what_ about Theo?” He demands, tangling his hands in Corey’s collar and shaking him. “Mason says _what?_ ”

But even as he’s yelling that in Corey’s face, demanding an answer, there’s another part of him—just as loud, his head just one clanging cacophony of contradictions—that’s silently begging him _don’t say it_. That’s childishly, _childishly_ insisting that if Mason doesn’t say it, and _Corey_ doesn’t say it, then it isn’t true. But.

“Mason says _what?_ ” Liam says, and this time his voice cracks; this time he isn’t sure whether he’s demanding, or begging.

But it doesn’t matter, because before Corey can answer either way—before Liam can make up his mind as to what answer he wants—there’s an arm sliding around his shoulders, and dragging him back. _No_ , Liam thinks immediately, and tries to lunge back forward, but the arm just tightens.

“Liam!” Derek is yelling in his ear. “Liam, _stop it!_ ”

But Liam can’t hear him over his own rushing thoughts; his own rushing blood. He brings his hands up to pull Derek’s arm off and away from him, _desperate_ to get back to Corey—desperate to get him to finish his sentence, desperate to find out what, exactly, Mason had to say about Theo—and he doesn’t even realize his hands are clawed, and that he’s tearing up Derek’s restraining forearm, until the blood starts to flow down his wrists.

But he doesn’t stop. But he _can’t_ stop.

“I’m sorry, Liam,” Derek whispers in his ear, and slides his bloody arm up from Liam’s shoulders to neck. “I’m so sorry.”

Derek isn’t apologizing for the chokehold; Liam knows that. He feels his mouth open in a silent, protesting _cry_ , and then he doesn’t feel anything else.

\---

Liam wakes up to someone saying, “Scott. _Scott_ , get back here! He’s waking—”

His eyes snap open, and he surges upwards.

Or he _tries to_ , anyway; he doesn’t get far. Derek literally tackles him back down flat in the back of his Toyota, his shins stapled over Liam’s thighs and his hands wrapped around Liam’s wrists raised over Liam’s head. Liam _snarls_ at him and snaps his teeth, rearing up against Derek’s hold and forcing Derek to lean back to avoid Liam catching his neck between his fangs.

“Get _off_ of me!” Liam snarls, thrashing against Derek’s hold, but Derek just pins him down harder, his teeth gritting.

“Liam,” he tries. “Liam, you have to _stop_. Liam!”

“ _No!_ ” Liam snaps back, and manages to get one knee free of Derek’s hold, which he instantly uses to slam against Derek’s ribs; Derek snarls in pain but doesn’t let him go, just pins his struggling leg back down. “Get _off_. Where’s Corey? Where’s _Mason?_ We have to—we have _to—_ ”

“Liam!” This time it’s Scott who yells it, and he doesn’t just _yell_ ; Liam flinches as he feels the absolute _wave_ of Scott’s alpha authority crash down over him, but he shakes it off with a rough jerk of his head.

“It’s not _true!_ ” Liam yells, and this time when he rears up, he manages to off-balance Derek enough that he can dislodge him, and throw him off. Derek tumbles back into the side of the Toyota, rocking it. 

“Scott,” Lydia warns from the driver’s seat. “Derek!”

Derek grits his teeth and crouches, clearly about to make another run at pinning Liam back down. Liam just whirls around to face him, clawed hands spreading wide, but then he sucks in a sharp, startled breath as he’s suddenly yanked back against the back row of seats. “Liam!” Scott hisses urgently in his ear, his arms now wrapped around Liam’s torso and pinning Liam’s arms to his sides. “Liam, _please!_ You have to stop. You have to calm down!”

“No!” Liam protests again, but it’s weaker this time; the flash-fire of his anger starting to burn itself out as he struggles against Scott’s hold. “No, it’s, it’s _not_. Scott, it _can’t be—_ ”

“I’m sorry, Liam,” Scott just says, his voice cracking, and that’s what does it. The last of Liam’s anger cracks right along with Scott’s voice and he gives a wounded cry and arches back against Scott’s hold, not fighting it so much as fighting the sudden agonizing _fissure_ in his own chest. 

“It’s not, it’s not,” he finds himself helplessly repeating. “It can’t be. It can’t, it… _it_ …”

Across the back of the trunk, Derek’s expression has gone raw. Liam squeezes his eyes closed so that he doesn’t have to keep looking at it, but it does _nothing_ for him still being able to feel Scott’s arms like vices around him; for him still being able to hear Scott’s voice as Scott whispers, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” over and over again. One of his hands rises to stroke back over Liam’s scalp, holding Liam’s head against his shoulder as Liam digs his heels against the floor of the trunk, arching again and again as they slip, like he could physically fight off the truth taking up residence in the backseat between him, and Derek, and Scott; the truth taking up residence between his ribs.

“It can’t, it _can’t_ ,” Liam gasps, just that over and over again, and then he finally slumps, going all but limp in Scott’s hold. “It _can’t_ ,” he whispers one last time, but.

But it can. But Theo’s dead.

“Scott,” Liam says; just that, just: “ _Scott_.”

“I’m here, Liam,” he answers fiercely; Liam feels his mouth move against the side of his own head, Scott still pressed up tight to him. “I’m right here.”

Liam stares at nothing, his eyes fixed sightlessly on some spot just to the left of Derek’s still-crouched, hovering form. The fissure in his chest is still yawning wide, but the edges of it are starting to cauterize, some, _anger_ —something even hotter than anger; _rage_ —licking up the sides of it. 

“Scott,” he says, too calmly. “Tell me we’re going to find her. Tell me we’re going to find Monroe.”

Scott’s arms tighten around his chest, his head. “We’re going to find her,” he whispers fiercely. “I promise, Liam. We’re going to find her.”

\---

What they find _first_ , however, are the handful of hunters still ransacking Theo’s apartment.

The hunters clearly weren’t expecting the cavalry and disarming them is the work of a moment, Scott and Malia and Derek all spreading out and taking care of their own individual targets. But Liam—he goes for the one standing by the blank stretch of wall where Theo’s map had been.

He goes for the one with black blood on their hands.

The man quails back when Liam gets him pinned to the floor, Liam _snarling_ at him with his dropped fangs just inches from the man’s throat. “Jesus _christ_ ,” he yells, all but trying to crawl _through_ the floor to get away. “Somebody get him—get him _off_.”

“Or, counter-offer,” Stiles proposes, coming forward to stand over Liam’s shoulder; he and Lydia and Corey had grudgingly waited in the hallway until Scott had yelled the all-clear, “you tell us what you did with our friend, and we _don’t_ let him rip your throat out. _With his teeth_.”

Stiles is playing up the hunter’s obvious terror but he’s ultimately exaggerating. Liam, however, might not be; he bares his teeth at the hunter below him, who goes sheet-white and whose scent sours with so much fear that Liam can actually _taste_ it in the back of his throat. He doesn’t care.

“Chop, chop!” Stiles presses, literally _chopping_ a hand through the air. “We’re on something of a clock, here!”

“Fuck you,” the hunter manages to spit, though his eyes keep flicking from Liam’s flared eyes to Liam’s mouthful of fangs. 

But Derek just comes up alongside Liam’s other shoulder. “That’s really not how this is going to go,” he warns the hunter quietly. 

The hunter flinches, but he also just bares his own teeth at them. “Won’t do you any good, unless you’re that desperate to have something to bury.”

It’s only Stiles and Scott lunging forward and wrapping their arms around Liam’s shoulders, and hauling him back, that prevent him from making good on Stiles’ earlier threat. He manages to rip out of Stiles’ grip, but not Scott’s, and before he can take advantage of having one arm free Malia is _there_ and taking Stiles’ place.

“Monroe, then,” Derek says smoothly, right over the top of the sound of Liam snarling and struggling. “Tell us where to find her.”

“Not happening,” the hunter sneers, and Liam’s just about to lunge for him again, Scott’s and Malia’s restraining hands be damned, when Stiles suddenly speaks up.

“I’ll do you one better, Derek,” he interjects, and waggles a sleek black cell phone when several pairs of eyes all snap over to him. “GPS app on the phone says the _winner, winner, chicken dinner_ address is 2700 Fairview Street, Forest Ranch.”

The hunter’s pulse jumps.

“Derek,” Scott starts to order, but Derek is already reaching down, and _slamming_ the hunter’s head against the ground; the man goes out like a light.

“Go,” Derek tells Scott. “I’ll get them secured for when your dad and _your_ dad,” he nods at Stiles, “and Parrish get here. _Go!_ ”

They go.

By some miracle Derek manages to catch up with them before they reach the warehouse, but then he _stops_ , pinning Lydia and Stiles to the side of his Toyota and having some hissed argument with them. Argent screeches to a stop in his own SUV beside them seconds later. Liam doesn’t listen to him as he flies out of his car _or_ to Stiles snarling something at Derek. Liam doesn’t _care_. He starts to head for the warehouse doors; he can _smell_ Monroe.

He can smell Theo.

But then he _can’t_ keep walking, anymore; Scott wraps one arm around his shoulders and yanks him back against himself, pinning Liam to his own body. “Wait,” Scott orders lowly, and rides out Liam’s first, instinctive struggle. “Liam, we will _get_ her, but you have to _wait_.” Liam starts to snarl in frustration, but Scott just lifts his head and yells, “Derek!”

There’s a few more seconds of delay, and then Derek jogs over to them, Argent on his heels. 

“Scott,” Liam says, once they’ve joined their little group, “let me _go_.”

Scott lets him go.

There are a handful of hunters inside, all armed. Liam ignores them, even as Argent is swearing and bringing up his own weapon. He ignores the way that Scott and Malia and Derek all fan out around him; he ignores Lydia and Stiles, coming through the doorway behind them no matter what it was that they must have promised Derek.

He ignores all of them, and looks straight at Monroe.

Only then he blinks and exhales shakily out—the cauterized-fissure in his chest threatening to crack right back open—because he looks straight at _Theo_ , crumpled at Monroe’s feet. Liam’s first, instinctive thought is, _he’s dead, he’s really dead_ , because Theo really _looks_ dead—the bottom half of his face is covered with black blood and his skin is deathly pale—but then Theo _coughs_. 

_Oh, my god_ , Liam thinks, surprise and a sudden, starburst of hope _exploding_ in his chest. _He’s alive_.

Liam moves before he’s even thought about it. 

The others swear and react; Argent cracks off a shot, and Scott and Malia and Derek all lunge for some of the hunters, but Liam only has eyes for Theo. _You’re alive_ , he just keeps thinking. _You’re_ alive.

Except Monroe is standing in the way. “That’s far enough, Liam,” she orders, and brings up a pistol to point directly between his eyes; Liam can smell the wolfsbane even from across the room. Liam stops, and flicks his eyes up to hers from Theo’s crumpled form.

He feels his mouth start to fill with fangs.

Later, he’ll spend _hours_ spooling the sequences of events back through his head, trying to identify the moment when he—had decided to do what he did. But that’s _later_. In the moment, he feels himself drop low on his bent legs, and then he _lunges_.

Monroe’s ribs cracking sound exactly like the dry twigs Liam’s dad always throws on the fire when they go camping; her heart shredding between his claws feels like nothing he’s ever felt before.

He rips his hand back out of her chest on pure instinct, and stays crouched over her, panting, his every exhale _shaking_ loose of his lungs, his eyes wide and fixed on the frozen rictus of her disbelieving expression, immortalized in death. 

And then Theo lets out a pained gasp somewhere above him; Liam jerks his head up just in time to see Theo fall heavily sideways, and then he’s scrambling forward again.

He halts reflexively when Derek yells at him to stop. But he’s close enough that he can meet Theo’s pain-hazed eyes when Theo manages to blink them open, and look over at him. Liam can see the surprise there, buried underneath all the pain.

“Theo, no, no, no,” Liam chants desperately, his hands hovering over Theo’s skin, Derek’s warning still ringing in the back of his mind. Theo stares at him for a split-second longer, and then his eyelashes flutter and he suddenly convulses, his head dropping back flat as his entire body locks up and he seems to choke on the air in his lungs. 

“We have to do something,” Liam says blankly, his hands still hovering uselessly— _stupidly_ —over Theo’s chest. “Scott, we have to help him somehow.”

Theo chokes and convulses again; Liam misses most of whatever Scott says to the others. But he hears Derek and Argent respond. He hears them _give up_.

“The hospital,” Liam interrupts, frantic. “Scott, your mom. My dad. They’ll know—they’ll be able—they’ll think of _something_.”

 _They have to_ , he just keeps thinking. They _have_ to think of something. Theo convulses again, and Liam can’t take it anymore; he drops his hovering hands to the bare skin of Theo’s arm; to the curve of his neck and collarbone exposed by his bloody shirt. 

“Liam,” Scott tries, but Liam just shakes his head roughly and yells, “I don’t _care!_ ,” as he starts to take Theo’s pain; it hits him like a _freight train_ , and he gasps through it. Theo relaxes for just a second under his hands before his body wrenches itself back up tight again. “We have to try something,” Liam begs, and he _is_ begging now. “We can’t just let him die like this!”

There’s a conversation happening above him, but Liam can’t focus on it. Theo’s pain is overwhelming, and Liam isn’t even _taking_ all of it; he can’t. He gasps through what he can, his eyes on Theo’s face as Theo tips his head back sideways and looks hazily back at him. But.

 _But_.

“Okay,” Scott decides quietly. 

Derek ends up carrying Theo out. Liam doesn’t stop siphoning Theo’s pain for an instant.

\---

Liam spends every second of the ride back to Beacon Hills convinced that each is going to be Theo’s last.

He just won’t stop _convulsing_ , these horrible, arched-back, open-mouthed _spasms_ that wrack his entire body. Liam keeps his hands locked around Theo’s face, Derek and Malia each with their hands on Theo’s bare arms, the skin underneath his pushed-up shirt, but it barely seems to _help_ ; Theo just collapses back down, only to convulse again seconds later. He won’t stop coughing up black blood.

 _Please_ , Liam thinks, his eyes squeezing shut. _Please_ , he prays, even though he has no idea who he’s praying _to_. 

_Don’t do this_ , he thinks, and doesn’t realize he’s said it aloud until he cuts open his lips and tongue on his fangs. “Don’t do this,” he whispers again, and has to fold over Theo to press it directly into the skin and flesh and bone over Theo’s heart as he begs, “Please. Please. _Please_.”

The Toyota jerking to a stop at the hospital comes as a surprise. Seeing his dad comes as even more of one, even though Liam had _known_ Scott and the others were going to call him. It doesn’t seem real; it seems, somehow, even less real than Theo dying at his feet. Liam stares at him framed in the back of Derek’s open trunk, absently aware that he’s covered in blood—black and otherwise—and says, “Dad,” his voice blank with shock, and desperation, and the clogged-up mess of his own throat, raw from breathing in Theo’s poisoned, acidic scent.

Liam gets shoved back when Derek climbs back into the trunk to retrieve Theo; he has to be, because he can’t get his limbs to move right. Or at least he can’t until Derek starts to disappear from sight with Theo in his arms, and then Liam makes a panicked noise and hurries forward; he can’t lose sight of them. He can’t lose sight of _Theo_ ; not again.

He manages to follow them to the room that Ms. McCall and his dad had prepped, but then it goes to shit. “You all have to get out of here,” Ms. McCall orders tightly, after she nearly runs into Scott; Liam freezes where he’d already been straining forward against Derek’s restraining hands, Derek having caught him as Liam had tried to lunge forward to get to Theo’s bedside. “You have to let us work.”

“No,” Liam denies, immediately and without thought. “I’m not going.”

Derek tightens his grip. “Liam,” he says, and tries to force him back anyway.

“I said I’m not going!” Liam yells, and he can feel his eyes flaring and his fangs dropping but he can’t stop either of them; he struggles against Derek’s hold, trying to dislodge his grip.

But: “Liam!” Scott snarls, and Liam flinches. Can’t help it, the alpha force too much for him this time. Derek takes advantage and gets him shoved back, and then shoved back, until Liam is in the hallway.

“No!” Liam snaps. “No, I’m not going! Get _off_ , I’m not—” Derek doesn’t release him, just keeps fighting with him, and forcing him back, until finally Liam’s back hits the wall of the hallway opposite Theo’s room. Liam _snarls_.

But Derek just drops his weight across one forearm braced against Liam’s chest like a _pinion_ , pinning him. Liam can’t get the leverage he needs to try and twist out of it, though he tries, snapping and snarling his fanged mouth and clawing at Derek’s restraining arm. It drowns out most of Scott’s pleas for him to calm down, until finally Scott just takes a hold of his head, and forces it around so that Liam can’t help but look at him.

“Please,” Scott begs. “Liam, _please_.”

He presses his forehead to Liam’s, and holds it there no matter how fiercely Liam tries to jerk away. _Please_ , Scott just keeps pleading, over and over, his voice starting to crack, and after a while Liam can’t help it; his mouth opens in another of those silent cries, and his head falls back against the wall behind him instead as he squeezes his eyes shut. The pain of that manages to distract him for just a second, just a heartbeat, so Liam does it again, and then again, until Scott makes another noise and slides one hand back to cushion Liam’s head. 

“Please,” Scott whispers one last time, and Liam looks at him, can feel the way that his expression is twisted up and just as _raw_ as Scott’s staring back at him. 

“Scott,” Liam croaks back, unsure what he’s even asking for, and Scott just stares at him and then drops their foreheads back together; Liam lets his hands fall away from Derek’s forearm still braced across his chest, and stops fighting.

He follows without resistance when Derek pulls him off the wall, and drags him over to a chair in the corner of the waiting room. Scott and Derek drop into the chairs on either side of him, and Liam recognizes a makeshift prison when he sees one, but Liam doesn’t _care_ ; he collapses into the seat, and lets his head fall back against the back, not matter that the angle is awkward enough that his neck immediately starts to ache.

 _Please_ , he thinks, and tries to empty his head, his ribs, of everything but the sound of Theo’s too-fast, and then too-slow, and then too-fast heartbeat down the hallway.

 _Please_.

\---

Nolan can’t look him in the eye, when him and Mason and Alec finally arrive at the hospital.

Nolan can’t look _any_ of them in the eye, really, but he can’t even seem to look directly at Liam; his eyes skip away every time he tries, and his scent—even as burned out as Liam’s senses are—goes ashy, and cloying. 

Liam doesn’t think it’s _just_ the blood covering his hands and clothes.

Though it’s probably at least partially that. He doesn’t realize exactly how bad of a state he’d been in until he starts trying to scrub down his arms with the paper towels and water that Lydia had found, and winds up going through almost a whole stack. And there’s not a lot he can do about the blood crusted under his fingernails, black and rust-red both; he spends a few increasingly-desperate seconds trying to scrape it out until Malia suddenly grabs his hands, and stills them. 

Liam jerks to look up at her. She looks back, and then she pulls her bottom lip slowly between her teeth and bites it, and leans around him for one of the last paper towels. As Liam watches she wets it, and then carefully— _carefully_ —cleans off one last streak of blood off the back of his wrist. 

“Thank you,” Liam tells her when she’s done. His voice _croaks_ ; he flinches. 

Malia just grimaces sympathetically at him, and drops his hands. 

But she sits with him, when he drops back into his seat, one of her feet stretched out along the hospital tile to touch his. And when Derek shows back up with new clothes for everyone, Malia pads after him to an empty room, and waits outside while he changes; he finds himself focusing on her heartbeat as he stands alone in the room, the steady beat of it helping to tamp down the instinctive, immediate panic he feels at being alone, and out of sight of the others; of having the others be out of _his_ sight. 

He smiles shakily at her when he comes out of the room, his old clothes left in one of the biohazard bins, and stands guard in turn while she changes.

She shifts away when they get back to the chairs, and Liam feels himself smiling in spite of himself when she all but hands him off to Scott. Weirdly touched, Liam lowers himself gingerly into his chair, and gives Scott an apologetic grimace. Scott just smiles softly right back, and then leans forward to wrap his hand around the back of Liam’s neck, and press their foreheads together, just for a second. Liam shudders into the grounding touch, his eyes slipping closed.

And then he shifts back, and drops his head back against the back of his chair again, and seeks out Theo’s heartbeat. He just closes his eyes, and listens to it rise and fall, and tries to breathe when he hears Theo breathe.

He’s still like that, sprawled back in an exhausted sort of half-doze, when his dad and Ms. McCall suddenly exit Theo’s room, and start making their way down the hallway. Liam goes to jump to his feet, adrenaline and hope and _fear_ cutting their way through him, and then he finds that he _can’t_ , because Scott and Derek—the latter of whom had sat down next to him, at some point—clamp their hands over his wrists, and keep him trapped in his chair. Liam doesn’t understand _why_ until he feels his claws digging furrows into the wood of the armrests; he jolts, and quickly straightens his fingers.

“It’s okay,” Scott murmurs quickly to him. “It’s okay. Just breathe.”

Liam does as instructed, his eyes slipping closed, and when he opens them back up, his dad is standing at the edge of the waiting area, and staring at him. Liam freezes again, and only slowly— _slowly_ —climbs to his feet when Scott and Derek release his arms. 

But his dad’s brow just furrows, and he frowns at Liam as he says, “What is wrong with you? Get over here.”

Liam _launches_ himself forward. His dad catches him with an _oof_ and rocks back a few steps, but wraps his arms just as tightly around Liam and Liam wraps his arms around him. They spend a long few seconds like that, Liam’s face buried in his dad’s chest—ignoring, as best he can, the fact that he can smell Theo’s blood all over his dad’s hands, and coat—until Liam can finally bring himself to pull back. His dad strokes a hand down his face, searching his eyes, and then smiles softly.

“Theo will need another few rounds over the next couple of hours, but then, based on the progress we’ve seen so far, his healing should be able to take over,” his dad says. He’s saying it to the full room, but his arm is still around Liam’s shoulders, and he squeezes _hard_ as he says it, like a secret message. Liam turns his face back against his dad’s chest to hide it as his eyes start to burn, and his breath starts to shudder loose of his lungs. 

They can go in, Liam’s dad continues, but only a few at a time. Liam keeps his face buried in his dad’s chest, unwilling to risk asking to go and being shot down; he’s been getting these flashes, the last few hours, of the memory of the blood flowing from Derek’s arm as he’d fought to keep Liam from lunging back at Corey, or pinning him down in the back of his Toyota after Liam had woken up furious and terrified, or how Scott had had to press his forehead to Liam’s own and _beg_ as Liam had fought with him, and against Derek’s restraining arm. He feels his eyes burn hotter, and shame start to curdle in his gut.

But then Lydia announces, “Liam and I will go first.”

Liam jerks to look at her, heedless of his no-doubt red, splotchy face. Lydia just looks steadily back, before she turns to look at Scott—who’s openly gaping at her—in clear challenge. There’s a long stretch of tense silence, which only breaks when Ms. McCall suddenly cuts in and says, “I’ll take you,” directly to Lydia, and with a warning look at her son. She also reaches out, and gets a hand on Liam’s arm; Liam follows the pressure dumbly, still too surprised to do much else. 

It means by the time he comes fully back to himself, he’s already in Theo’s room, stood just inside the threshold. He doesn’t think it’s intentional but Ms. McCall is blocking his exit, and that’s really the only reason that he doesn’t turn around and immediately flee. 

_What if, what if, what if_ , his mind just keeps repeating, until Liam finally steels himself, and looks at Theo.

The black blood’s gone and his skin is no longer so deathly pale, but there’s an oxygen mask covering most of his face, and other machines and wires trailing from his body; one attached to his finger and leading to the heart rate monitor, another to an IV line taped down to the curve of his elbow. Liam stands stock-still in the middle of the room and stares, barely breathing.

Or, at least he does until Lydia joins him in the room, and puts a gentle hand on his back. “C’mon,” she murmurs quietly as she presses him gently forward.

“No,” Liam says immediately, reflexively, even as his feet are carrying him forward. “I shouldn’t, my dad said—”

But Lydia just keeps pressing and pressing, and eventually Liam stumbles to a stop at Theo’s bedside. This close the steady rasp of Theo’s breathing is easier to hear, and just—just _easy_ ; Liam exhales out his own shaky breath as he listens to it. 

And then he jumps again as Lydia takes her hand off his back, and catches one of his uselessly dangling hands, instead. She starts to tug it forward, towards Theo’s laying slack on the bed. Liam sucks in a sharp breath as his fingertips touch the back of Theo’s hand, his skin dry and soft and _warm_ , and his fingers spasm without his say-so; Theo’s brow furrows underneath the oxygen mask.

Liam _yanks_ his hand back.

But: “Hey, hey, hey,” Lydia chants quietly, and catches his hand again. “Hey, it’s okay, Liam. It’s okay.” She looks over her shoulder, and Liam realizes why the next second when Ms. McCall echoes, “She’s right, Liam. It’s okay.”

Liam looks up at Lydia, who nods one last time in encouragement, and then he exhales out again, and reaches forward on his own initiative to layer one hand back over the top of Theo’s; to slide his other underneath it, so that he’s cradling Theo’s hand between his palms. Theo stirs, just a little, and his pulse picks up; Liam can feel it beating against his own fingertips, steady and strong. He stares down at Theo’s hand between his, his shoulders starting to heave, and then his eyes flick up as Theo’s head turns towards him.

His eyes are still closed but his expression is peaceful, easy. Liam presses forward a little closer, Theo’s hand still cradled between his, as he stares at Theo’s face; as he listens, trying to match the heartbeat he can hear in Theo’s chest to the heartbeat he can _feel_ against his fingertips. 

_You’re alive_ , he can’t help but think, the deceptively simple two words of it cracking the cauterized-then-bleeding, and back again, wound in his chest right back open. He nearly gasps with the sudden shaky relief of it. 

And then he suddenly remembers Lydia, because she makes a soft, startled noise. 

Blinking and straightening up some, Liam glances at her over his shoulder. He studies her face, her soft expression; so different than the one she’d been wearing when she’d been staring Scott down outside. But that reminds Liam. “What were you going to say to Scott before?” He wonders, the question just falling out of his mouth before he can stop it.

Lydia blinks. “What makes you think I was going to say anything?” She replies, a little wary.

Liam’s lips flicker in a smirk, his hands spasming around Theo’s; he sneaks a glance at Theo’s sleep-slack face, oddly reminded of him. “You had this look on your face,” he answers quietly.

Lydia blushes. It’s just a light dusting of color but it changes the quality of her entire expression, softening it. She bites her lips to hold back a shaky smile. “I was,” she starts to say. “I was going to remind him that he’s your alpha, not your jailer.”

Liam feels his own expression slacken in surprise. “Oh,” he says stupidly, and then he smiles helplessly back at her. “Oh, well. Thanks. I know,” he starts to stammer, his head turning reflexively towards the wall, on the other side of which he can sense Scott pacing around. “I know he means well, but…thanks,” he concludes finally, smiling at her, and then he looks back down at Theo. 

The smile slides right off his face. 

“And not just for that,” he says, thinking of Lydia’s raw scream, that had stopped them in their tracks before they could get any further away from Beacon Hills; of Lydia’s quiet, hesitant _I have an idea_ that had convinced Scott that Theo still had a chance. “For…for everything.”

Lydia stares at him, her expression blown open and raw. He can see the internal debate play out on her face, her lip twisting between her teeth—uncomfortable with all the raw honesty rolling around the room, maybe; wanting to defer it—but all of the sudden she glances at Theo, and releases her lip. 

“You’re welcome,” she finally says, and smiles shakily.

Liam smiles just as shakily back, and then he looks away from her, and back at Theo. Theo’s pulse is still beating steadily against the fingertips that Liam had pressed to his wrist, and his breath is still rasping easily in and out of his lungs under the oxygen mask still covering his face. Liam chews his lip, and then he slowly takes his hands away.

He can sense Lydia gearing up to protest. “Alec, Nolan, and Mason need to see him like this, too,” he explains quietly, cutting her off. “It’s—it’s hard to explain, I know you can’t sense them the same way—” can’t sense the way Nolan’s heartbeat had gone wild with guilt every time he’d looked at Liam, or the way that Alec couldn’t ever seem to take a full breath, like he was afraid of what he might smell, “—but…”

“I get it,” Lydia interrupts. Liam looks back at her in surprise, wondering _how_ , but the second he looks at her, he can see that—she does. 

Liam stares at her a little longer, and then glances one last time at Theo. “I’ll come back once everyone else has had a chance to see him,” he decides. He _promises_ himself; it’s the only way he can get his feet to move.

Back out in the waiting area, _everyone_ stops as they reappear. Nolan, Alec, and Mason aren’t even breathing; Liam can hear them suck in sharp breaths, and doesn’t hear them exhale them back out. Their eyes are on his face. He grins, and it’s not even an affectation, a prop. Relief cracks open in his own chest like he could pour it directly into theirs, and he _grins_. 

Scott’s announcement that he wants everyone to head home, and take a break, and recover, comes as exactly _no_ surprise. Liam feels his spine lock right back up with tension as Scott says it, and he can’t help his eyes flicking immediately to Derek as Derek glances just as immediately at him; he grimaces, but manages to stay quiet as Scott cajoles everyone into seeing things his way; into agreeing. 

But the second everyone else reluctantly agrees, and starts preparing to leave, Liam makes his way carefully over to Scott, hyper-aware the entire time of Derek watching him go. “Scott,” he says, when he’s close enough that he can say it in barely more than a whisper. “I’m not going.”

He _can’t_. He tries to let that thought show on his face, in the helpless look he gives Scott as Scott looks back at him, Scott’s shoulders falling. 

“I’ll stay out of the way,” he hurries to assure him. “I’ll do whatever you want me to,” he all but begs; can’t _stop_ himself from begging, “but I’m not leaving.”

Scott studies him, and his eyes aren’t alpha-red but they’re more burgundy than his usual brown. “Okay,” he finally says, and smiles when Liam jerks and looks up at him in surprise. He smiles wider, and then he looks up, over Liam’s shoulder—at Derek, Liam quickly realizes—and nods, just once. “Okay.”

Liam shudders out a relieved exhale, and smiles back. 

\---

But as the hours crawl by, and the beat of Theo’s heart gets stronger, and the rasp of his breath gets steadier, and more even, an insidious seed of _something_ starts to sprout in Liam’s chest.

“Alec,” he says, his eyes fixed on the opposite side of the waiting area, where the wall and the floor meet. Next to him, Alec _jumps_.

“Uh, yeah?” He replies, in barely more than a whisper. 

He’d been desperately quiet since he’d arrived, really, and Liam knows— _knows_ , without waver or uncertainty—why; he’d been—is—listening for Theo’s heartbeat, same as Liam. He’d been trying to find it underneath all the chaos of the other members of the pack, and the sounds of the rest of the hospital marching on around them. 

He keeps touching the back of his neck.

Liam looks over just in time to catch Alec do it again, his fingers brushing the very top of his spine. It’s the exact place that someone would rest their fingers if they were to hook them around the back of Alec’s neck. Liam stares.

“Tell me what happened,” Liam orders him evenly, and his voice is a too-calm; a steady sort of _un_ steady, ultimately fragile in its construction. Alec blanches.

“Um, you—you heard Nolan,” he tries, clearly sensing _something_ of the roiling mess that’s starting to boil in Liam’s chest. “He gave a pretty good explanation, you know, of what—”

“No,” Liam interrupts, still too-calm. He meets Alec’s eyes head-on, and holds them, even as Alec’s eyes widen and he stiffens, some. “Tell me what _happened_.”

But after a second his gaze just flitters away from Liam’s, and he bites his lip. “Liam, I don’t—I don’t _under—_ ”

Liam gives up on trying to be subtle. “Could he have gotten out?” He demands, over-loud. Down the hallway in the doorway of Theo’s room, Scott stiffens, and looks back at him.

Alec stares. “What?” 

“Could he,” Liam presses, more quietly; his gaze rising to Scott’s as Scott studies him through narrowed eyes, “have gotten out? With you and Mason and Nolan, I mean.”

Alec freezes. Liam feels the mess in his chest boil _over_ , crystalizing into anger and _searing_ his lungs and throat.

“No,” Alec tries, apparently sensing it. “I mean, I don’t…I don’t know if…” He stammers, and then he grimaces and blurts out, “He _said_ he couldn’t. He said he…” 

He hooks his fingers around the back of his neck again, and now Liam can _perfectly_ see it, like a high-definition three-dimensional movie playing out right in front of his eyes; Theo clasping his fingers around the back of Alec’s neck and pressing his forehead against Alec’s own, probably, while he explained to Alec the necessity of him making the _heroic sacrifice_. 

Only—only he wouldn’t have thought of it as _heroic_ , Liam realizes, and surges to his feet, finding that he can’t sit still any longer. Theo probably wouldn’t have even thought of it as a _sacrifice_. 

It would have just been _necessary_. It would have been the only thing to do. Liam barely manages to swallow a snarl.

“Liam,” someone says, and Liam jerks and looks up at Scott, coming down the hallway towards him. It’s overlaid just slightly off-beat with Alec saying, “Liam,” too, shaky and uncertain and _guilty_.

Liam stares at Scott for a second longer, and then he whips around to glare back at Alec. “Did he even _try_ to save his own life?” He demands; Alec recoils back into his chair, and Scott closes the last few feet between him and Liam in a surge, his hands outstretched and landing on Liam’s biceps.

“ _Liam_ ,” He insists, though there’s no extra _oomph_ behind it. Not yet, anyway.

But before Liam can snap something back, Alec is replying, “He’d been _shot_ three times,” desperate and quick. “He—he was poisoned, and bleeding everywhere, and he could barely seem to stand, and he told me—he _told_ me…” 

“Alec, hey,” Scott cuts off, releasing Liam to reach for Alec instead. “Alec, it’s not your fault.”

“No,” Liam agrees, and throws out a hand towards Theo’s room down the hallway. “It’s _his_.”

“ _Liam!_ ” Scott hisses, and this time there is an extra bite to his name, but it’s frustration, not alpha force.

“Tell me I’m wrong!” Liam challenges. “This is the _second_ time he’s done this! He _always_ does this, even back—” _with the Wild Hunt_ , Liam is realizing, Theo’s stupid smirking face as he’d thrown back _being the bait_ , after Liam had yelled _what the hell are you doing_. “He always,” Liam says, but the anger in his chest is cracking into something else again, something more poisonous and causing him to stumble back a bit. “He _always_ …”

“Okay!” Scott announces forcefully, and grabs his arm. “That’s enough. Come on.”

Liam tries to wrench his arm out of Scott’s grip exactly once, and then he stops when Scott’s fingers tighten warningly. Scott keeps dragging him down the hallway until they reach an empty room, and then Scott drags him _into_ the room, and to a second doorway. He throws Liam through it when they reach it.

Liam staggers to a stop and whips around to glare at him. But: “Shower,” Scott just orders, and points towards the stall at the other end of the little room. “ _Now_.” 

Liam thinks about arguing. He even opens his mouth to snap at Scott, but Scott just crosses his arms, and plants his feet wide. Liam stares at him for a few more seconds, and then he spins around and reaches for the hem of his shirt, ripping it over his head.

But the second he gets underneath the water—alone in the bathroom now, Scott having closed the door—Liam abruptly _gets it_. As the hot water hits his skin it must absorb the lingering traces of Theo’s black blood—of Monroe’s _red_ blood, still crusted under his nails—and almost instantly the room fills with the scent of it, thick and cloying even with all the steam. Liam _gags_.

He also scrubs his forearms raw, trying to get every last trace of blood _off_. The single washcloth set on top of the room’s single towel feels almost like steel wool with how hard he presses it against his flesh but Liam doesn’t _care_ ; he needs the scent gone, suddenly, more than he needs anything else. He doesn’t stop scrubbing until he rubs a section of his skin raw enough that it actually starts to bleed—just briefly, just before it almost immediately heals—and the washcloth falls from his shaking fingers, and lands with a disturbingly wet _plop_ on the shower floor.

Liam stares down at it, just trying to breathe.

Scott’s waiting, when he gets out. Liam had toweled himself dry and pulled the relatively clean clothes Derek had brought them all back on, and when he opens the door—nearly sending Scott tumbling back into the bathroom, since he’d apparently been leaning against it—Scott looks him over and then seems to _sag_ , all at once, with relief. 

Liam feels embarrassment churn in his gut. “Satisfied?” He snaps, giving it the only outlet he can think of.

But Scott just says, “Yeah,” quiet and grateful, and pivots on a heel so that Liam has room to slide past him, out of the doorway. 

Liam goes, but.

“Liam,” Scott suddenly says, and Liam freezes. He turns around. “I’m sorry,” Scott tells him, raw and honest, when he sees Liam look back at him. “He shouldn’t have been alone. I shouldn’t have _left_ him alone.”

Liam just stares. Of all the possible things that Liam could think of to hold against Scott in this situation—and Liam’s sure he’ll think of _some_ , later when he’s trying to sleep, and desperately trying to sort out which parts he gets to blame _himself_ for—leaving Theo alone would have been the last of it. _He wasn’t alone_ , Liam thinks about arguing. The problem hadn’t been that Theo had been _alone_ , not really, it’d been—it’d _been_ … 

It’d been—it _is_ —that no matter how many people Theo is surrounded by, he always _thinks_ he’s alone. He always _convinces_ himself that he’s alone.

He always _decides_ that he is—that he’ll make sure he stays—alone.

“Great,” Liam finds himself replying, and he has to bite off the hysterical, humorless laugh that tries to claw its way out of his throat. “So you’re sorry for the part of this mess that wasn’t your fault, and when he wakes up in a few hours—” because Theo _would_ wake up, _had_ to wake up, “—he’s going to be sorry for the part of it that wasn’t _his_ fault—” that he hadn’t actually successfully managed to martyr himself, probably, Liam thinks viciously, “—and the both of you are going to just keep trying to solve everyone else’s problems but your own.”

Scott recoils. “Liam…”

The shocked expression on his face cuts right through the snarled _thing_ sitting high up under Liam’s throat. He freezes, and swallows. “I’m sorry,” he eventually croaks, and grimaces when he meets Scott’s eyes. “This has just been—a _really_ long day,” he tries to explain, and Scott gives him a flicker of a sympathetic smile: _no kidding_. 

Liam takes a deep breath, and for the first time in _hours_ he realizes that he isn’t breathing in the toxic reek of Theo’s poisoned blood; something wound tight in his shoulders loosens. 

“This was a good call,” he tells Scott, half an apology, as he holds up one forearm. “Thanks for making it.

Scott nods, but it’s jerky; automatic. Liam flinches and hesitates, but the only thing he could say is _I’m sorry_ , again, and as sorry as he really is, he—doesn’t think it’d help. What _might_ help, he thinks, is making it so that Scott can stop having to _manage_ him; he flinches, and makes an abrupt about-face for the door out of the room. He doesn’t stop walking until he gets back to the waiting area.

Alec’s gone when he gets back. Liam stares for a second at his empty chair but as his instincts flare reflexively out, he locates Alec’s heartbeat in Theo’s room, close enough that it’s blending, some, with Theo’s. For a moment Liam _aches_ , his eyes flicking to Theo’s door and his body practically _straining_ that way, but. But instead he just drops back into his earlier seat—his _prison_ of a seat, even though Scott and Derek had left it unguarded, now—and covers his face with his hands. 

_I shouldn’t have left him alone_ , Scott had said, quiet like a confession. Liam curls his fingers a little harder against his face, his latest breath shuddering loose of his chest, and thinks, helpless and unstoppable, _Yeah. I shouldn’t have, either_.

\---

The uncertain peace that falls lasts right up until the time that Ms. McCall and Liam’s dad make the decision that they can take Theo off of the supplemental oxygen, and then several things happen in rapid succession: Ms. McCall nearly trips over Alec, who’d been hovering behind her as she’d removed the oxygen mask from Theo’s face; Liam starts to open his mouth to ask his dad—for about the fifth time in the last few hours, admittedly—when he thinks Theo might wake up; and Scott makes a snap decision.

“Scott!” Both Liam and Alec protest after Scott’s shared that decision, nearly in unison, but Scott’s immovable. 

“You’re both going,” Scott just repeats firmly. “If only because my mom really _will_ turn you into throw pillows if you do not get out of hers and your dad’s—” he nods at Liam, “—ways.” 

_And apparently you are both incapable of that_ , Scott doesn’t say, but it hovers there in the air between all of them. Liam feels his mouth go mulish, while Alec beside him just flushes and shifts from foot to foot. 

But he goes with Malia when she arrives to drag him off to the Preserve, and Liam—Liam meets Derek’s eyes through his passenger side window as Derek pulls up in the patient drop-off area, and then bites off a frustrated noise and climbs into the car when Derek does nothing but raise his eyebrows.

Derek _also_ takes him to the Preserve, but where Malia had apparently planned to run Alec around the established trails like an overexcited collie, Derek takes him _deep_ into the woods, Liam staggering along after him through the thick undergrowth, until they reach a clearing. Liam stops at the edge, and stares.

Derek, however, doesn’t stop, at least not until he reaches the opposite side. Then he turns on a heel and spreads his arms wide, and waits.

Liam steps slowly into the clearing after him, one hand held up to keep a branch from snapping back and whipping him across the face. “This does not seem like a Scott-approved therapy technique,” he notes.

Derek just shrugs, and bounces a little on his toes. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

Liam narrows his eyes. “What if I don’t want to fight you?”

Derek just smirks. “You _don’t_ want to fight me,” he agrees. “But seeing as you can’t fight Theo, or—” he adds, smirking and sly, “—Theo’s raging martyr-complex—”

Liam’s struck out before his conscious mind has decided to do so; Derek dodges easily back out of the way. Liam stares after him, his shoulders heaving. He’d kept his claws sheathed, and while he can feel them prickling at the tips of his fingers, it’s not actually _hard_ to keep them at bay. 

Derek is not, after all—like he said—the one that he wants to fight.

But the _movement_ is good. The sudden sharp burn to his muscles is _good_. At the very least it’s better than the directionless fury that’d taken up residence in his ribcage, edging out his heart and his lungs and twisting up tighter and more potentially explosive every time he thinks of Theo at that warehouse; in the back of Derek’s car; at the hospital. Liam works his jaw for a few seconds, considering, and then he crouches down a little on his haunches, the balls of feet; Derek smirks again. 

Liam _lunges_.

The fourth or fifth time Derek plants him into the ground—depending, Liam supposes, on whether or not Derek twisting that one time and letting Liam’s _own_ momentum plant _himself_ into the ground counts—he stays crouched over Liam, one knee pinning Liam’s ribcage and his eyes curious on Liam’s face. 

“Are you really pissed at him for saving Alec’s and Mason’s and Nolan’s lives?” Derek wonders; Liam’s eyes widen.

“ _What?_ ” He hisses, and this time when he shoves Derek’s knee to try and dislodge him, Derek goes.

He also stands, and circles easily around to shed the momentum of Liam’s shove so that he’s facing Liam again as Liam climbs to his feet. “Are you,” Derek repeats, like Liam is hard of hearing, “really pissed at him for saving Alec’s and Mason’s and Nolan’s lives?”

“What are you _talking_ about?” Liam snaps, and makes a lunge for him.

Derek just spins out of the way, and plants a hand in the middle of Liam’s back as he goes to send him stumbling forward, and onto his hands and knees. Liam _snarls_ at the dirt between his hands, and whips around.

“That’s _not_ what I’m pissed about!” Liam yells, and throws himself at Derek again.

Derek catches him and then takes one step back, pivoting Liam up and over his hip and then _slamming_ him down onto the ground. “Really?” He says, speaking it smoothly over the top of Liam’s wheezing and with Derek himself not out of breath _at all_. “Because it kind of seems like it is.”

Liam shoves him off and rolls to his feet, but Derek’s apparently not done.

“Which part would you have liked him to do differently?” Derek wonders. “He got _shot_ within the first minute of realizing hunters were after them,” he reminds Liam, ignoring Liam snarling at him as he circles carelessly around. “Are you blaming him for the stairwell? For the parking lot?” Derek presses ruthlessly.

“God, fuck _you_ ,” Liam snaps, but Derek just smirks.

“Well?” Derek insists, spreading his arms wide.

“That’s not what I’m pissed about,” Liam repeats, and feels his expression twist in frustration when Derek just raises his eyebrows. “That’s _not_ what I’m pissed about!”

“You keep _saying_ that,” Derek counters. “What I’m not hearing is an alternate explanation.”

Liam’s next strike is wild; barely a conscious impulse. Derek grabs his arm and uses it to throw him forward, sending Liam stumbling several steps away and almost into a tree. Catching himself against the trunk, Liam whips around, shoulders heaving, and yells, “I want to know if he _tried!_ I want to know if at any point in his—in his _escape plan_ , if it ever even _occurred_ to him to try and include _himself_ in it!”

Liam had known that from the beginning Derek’s smarmy attitude had been a put-on, an affectation, even in the middle of being completely unable to stop himself from reacting to it. Now it disappears from Derek’s face completely, leaving only his solemn, sober expression behind. Liam stares at him, and feels his own expression twist as he digs his hands—his fingernails starting to lengthen helplessly into claws—against the bark of the tree at his back.

“I want to know if—I want to know if,” Liam says. Confesses, really; he’s confessing now. “I want to know if he wanted to live.”

Derek searches his face. “You think he didn’t?”

It’s a genuine question. _Yes_ , Liam thinks immediately, cruel and vicious and—above all else—terrified. _No_ , he thinks next, small and uncertain and desperate. _Maybe,_ he can’t help but wonder, because—because…

“I don’t know,” Liam finally tells him, quiet and with his voice cracking down the middle. 

Derek gives him a sympathetic look. “Maybe,” he suggests quietly, “you should ask him.”

Liam looks up at him, his whole body still heaving with the force of his uneven, shaky breathing. “What if he doesn’t know, either?” He wonders hoarsely.

Derek just keeps looking, and looking, and looking at him. And then he takes a deep breath, and looks back over his shoulder at—at where Beacon Hills sits, in the distance. He looks back at Liam.

“Then help him figure it out,” he concludes, and tips his chin back towards town.

\---

But Theo’s asleep when they get back to Derek’s building.

“C’mon,” Derek says, and shoulders the door to the stairwell back open in a clear instruction. “You can come hang out at my place until he wakes up.”

The way he says _hang out_ clearly means something else. Means _cool off_ ; it’s not that Liam’s anger had reignited in his chest, exactly, it’s that he’s having so much trouble distinguishing it from the _terror_ that had never really faded from his bones and blood that he’s still practically shaking with it. He sets his jaw, and moves the opposite direction of where Derek had indicated.

“Liam!” Derek calls, irritated.

But Liam manages to make it to Theo’s door before Derek can stop him. He doesn’t manage to make it _through_ Theo’s door, however; Derek slides in between him and it before Liam can try. He plants one hand in the middle of Liam’s chest.

“ _No_ ,” he snaps, and whatever patience—whatever sympathy—he’d dug up in the Preserve, Liam’s clearly already consumed it. “Liam, stop. Your dad and Melissa were clear that Theo needs to sleep, not deal with you glowering at him.”

Liam somehow manages to reign in his fraying temper. “I’m going to use his shower, not challenge him to a duel,” he shoots back, trying to sound as reasonable as possible.

Derek doesn’t buy it. “Liam—”

Liam is already opening his mouth—this is the one argument he’s had in the last twenty-four hours that he just refuses to lose—but they’re both cut off, because inside, Theo suddenly calls, “Derek. It’s fine,” just loud enough to be heard.

Liam’s heart _stops_. Just full-on _stops_ for an entire second, before it starts up again, fast and frantic; he finds himself staring at Derek, who stares back. Derek searches his face for a few seconds, and then he—steps to the side, and out of the way of the door. 

He and Theo have some kind of heartwarming reunion as Liam storms inside, but Liam isn’t listening. He’d caught a bare glimpse of Theo braced against the railing of his loft, and for a second the sight had nearly floored him—Theo standing, unassisted, and in apparently-perfect health and sharing a long-suffering look with Derek over Liam’s behavior, like Liam hadn’t spent a full half-hour last night watching him try to cough up his own liquifying organs—and Liam had immediately found that he couldn’t handle it. He’d moved deeper into the apartment because his only other option would have been to plant his feet, and start yelling.

Derek’s gone by the time he makes it up the stairs. Theo turns to look at him, still braced back against the railing, but Liam can’t handle _that_ either; Theo in general _or_ the wary look on his face. Liam storms right past him, ignoring Theo saying his name, and slams the bathroom door shut behind himself.

He spends a few seconds leaning back against it, his head falling back and his eyes falling closed, and then he pushes off it, and goes to start the shower.

It’s a way to buy himself some time, sure, but it’s also necessary; he’s covered in a disgusting layer of grime from his sweat mixing with the dirt of the Preserve, and he can admit he doesn’t smell the greatest. The clothes Derek had brought him at the hospital are probably a lost cause; Liam kicks them into a corner, and resolves not to worry about them. 

He resolves not to worry about _anything_ , at least for the space of the shower.

But it doesn’t work. For one thing, he’d caught the frustrated sigh that Theo had given immediately after Liam had slammed the door. For another, even after Theo sits and then _lays_ on his bed—the mattress squeaking quietly underneath him—Liam can hear his heartbeat, adrenaline-fast at first and then slow, slow, as Theo apparently falls back asleep. 

Liam braces one forearm against the tile of the shower wall and leans his forehead against his arm, the water pounding down along his back, and just listens to it beat, for a while; a _long_ while. 

Theo’s still asleep when he gets out. He stays asleep through Liam rifling through his clothes to find something to wear, and he barely stirs when Liam slams one of the drawers of his dresser shut. Liam has to cover his face, after that—slumping from where he’d instinctively braced for Theo to snap awake—because Theo’s the lightest sleeper he _knows_. But finally he drops his hands, and finishes getting dressed, and leans back against the railing to watch Theo sleep, and wait.

He doesn’t have to wait long.

Theo blinks himself back awake within fifteen minutes or so, his eyelashes fluttering and awareness returning only slowly to his face. He rolls his head sideways so that he’s looking at Liam as he croaks, “Were you watching me sleep?”

It’s an invitation for a joke, or at least an opening to rag on him. But Liam just feels his jaw clench, and his fingers tighten against his arms, before he manages to shrug. “Fourteen hours ago I was watching you die, so.”

Theo blanches. He also brings a hand up to his face and scrubs at it as he sighs, and then he crunches upward so that he’s sitting. Sitting and looking at Liam expectantly, calmly; like he knew he just needed to weather Liam’s temper, and then they could—whatever. Get back to normal. Forget that Theo had nearly _died_ because he’d oh-so-nobly sacrificed himself for the sake of their three friends. 

_Are you really pissed at him because he saved Alec’s and Mason’s and Nolan’s lives?_

But no, Liam isn’t. He holds Theo’s eyes. He works his jaw. 

He asks, finally, “Do you really give so little a shit for your own life?”

Theo’s eyes _widen_ ; he hadn’t expected that. “ _What?_ ” He demands incredulously.

Incredulously, like Liam was being _absurd_. Like Theo _hadn’t_ thrown himself at a building full of hunters to give Alec and Mason and Nolan time to escape last night. Like he _hadn’t_ burst into Nolan’s house weeks ago and nearly lost a _lung_ to permanent cellular damage after Preston had shot him, when if he’d just _waited_ … If he’d just bothered to slow down and _think_ …

Liam tells him so. “Seriously?” He snaps. “This is the second time you’ve kamikazed it during a confrontation with hunters. Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“That’s not what happened,” Theo denies, and _he’s_ getting angry, now. 

_Good_ , Liam thinks; they might actually fucking _get_ somewhere, then. 

“The building was swarming with hunters—who were already trying to shoot Mason and Nolan, by the way—and I couldn’t see any other way out,” Theo tries to explain, and sounds _affronted_ by it; how dare he have to justify himself.

Liam scoffs. “Alec said you could have made it to the truck in time to get out with them.”

“Alec,” Theo shoots back, “is suffering from a guilt complex.”

“Oh yeah?” Liam replies, sneering. “Is Alec’s guilt complex bigger or smaller than your martyr complex?”

Theo _recoils_. “Liam, c’mon, that’s not fair.”

“No, really,” Liam insists, and he can feel his words like mental fingers in the air, scrabbling at Theo’s words, looking for any piece that he could peel back to reveal the truth underneath, unvarnished and unmanaged and _raw_. “You’re going to have to explain this to me, because fourteen hours ago I had to watch you trying to breathe around your own liquifying esophagus after you practically gift-wrapped yourself for Monroe.”

He’s expecting more defensiveness. He’s expecting more justifications, or a pissed-off reminder of what was at stake. Liam’s got each of his heels dug in and he’s _ready_ for that; he’s ready to fight with Theo until they’re both hoarse, and Theo can’t lie to him—or himself—anymore.

He is not, however, ready for it when Theo yells, “I didn’t want to die!”

Theo surges to his feet after he’s yelled that, his mouth full of another invective as he adds _jesus_ christ _, Liam_ , but Liam can’t respond; he can’t do anything but stare. But that’s okay, maybe, because apparently Theo isn’t done.

“Monroe shoved that fucking capsule down my throat, and all I could think about was how much I was going to miss the pack,” Theo snaps, and he’s as angry as Liam now. Angrier, maybe. Liam’s as relieved as he is stunned. But Theo _still_ isn’t done, and Liam feels his next words like a _blow_. “All I could think about was how much I was going to miss _you_. That’s what I was thinking about when you all found me, you understand? How much I _didn’t_ want to die.”

Theo had turned to look at him from where he’d paced away, and the shock on Liam’s face must be visible because it apparently shocks the anger right out of Theo. He stares back.

“Look,” he says, more quietly, after a stretch of long seconds. “I’m sorry, alright? _Not_ for saving Alec, Mason, and Nolan, I’d do that again in a heartbeat—” He hurries to clarify, and Liam feels his mouth drop slightly open, which Theo must interpret as him being about to argue because he keeps talking, louder and faster, “—but I’m sorry that you had to...that I nearly…” He can’t seem to finish. He finally swallows, and tells Liam, his voice practically _raw_ , “I’m sorry.”

Liam doesn’t know what to do with his apology. He doesn’t know what to do with the way Theo won’t stop _looking_ at him now, not expectantly at all anymore but with his expression half a wince, like he’s still waiting for Liam to erupt but now doesn’t know how to handle it; like his smart mouth is, for once, all out of words. Like he’d used up everything else, and then he’d used up the truth, and now he’s out of ideas. 

It’s probably the most honest Theo’s ever been with him. It’s probably the most honest Theo’s ever been with _himself_. Liam stares, and then he feels his expression start to crumple.

“You son of a bitch,” he whispers—the only thing he can think to say, and something that he’s honestly not sure if he’s saying to _Theo_ or to _himself_ —and throws himself forward.

\---

It’s not exactly a surprise when the rest of the pack shows up at Theo’s place later that day—Liam has vague memories of that being discussed at some point—and it’s somehow _less_ of a surprise that there was some unspoken expectation that sooner or later he and Theo would pull their heads out of their asses and finally resolve their issues in a more traditional way, but it _is_ a surprise when Theo’s only response is to color, briefly—the pink of it chasing its way all the way down his still-naked chest—and then lean into it, when Liam kisses him, hard and harsh and so desperately, completely relieved.

Theo’s place is a disaster—another thing that Liam had noted throughout the last twenty-four hours but just had had absolutely _no_ mental energy left to deal with—but it cleans up fast, with everyone there to help. Throughout the night Theo ends up completing almost a full circuit of the apartment, stopping along the way to have little reunions and heart-to-hearts with various pack members that Liam pretends—unlike the rest of the pack—he can’t hear. 

But he looks up, when he feels Theo’s eyes on him—Theo at his kitchen table with Lydia and smiling, wide and helpless, when he catches Liam’s eyes—and so he hears it when Theo says, “Yeah. Yeah, I am,” in response to Lydia’s pointed question about finally being ready to _belong_. 

He’s also there when Theo’s exhaustion apparently catches up with him, and Theo literally falls asleep standing up; Liam has to make a noise and quickly catch him as he starts to teeter, Theo almost immediately blinking himself back awake with a surprised, shy smile that Liam _has_ to kiss, and so he does. 

The wolf-whistles he ignores, one middle finger raised behind his back as he helps Theo upstairs, and Derek shepherds the rest of the pack out of Theo’s apartment. They’ll be back later, Liam knows; Alec’s probably going to be pretty firmly installed on Theo’s couch, for the foreseeable future. Or he will be whenever _Nolan_ isn’t around, Liam corrects himself, and hides his grin in Theo’s neck.

But while he manages to sleep, for a few hours, curled up against Theo’s back, he blinks himself back awake at one point and can’t fall back asleep. He doesn’t move, though, just presses his face into the back of Theo’s neck, and then carefully, _carefully_ —desperate not to wake him—presses his hand once over Theo’s stomach, once over his left shoulder, and once over his neck. Liam’s fang- and claw marks are long gone from Theo’s skin, and the wounds he’d bore at each of those places from Monroe and Preston are even longer gone, but it doesn’t matter; Liam still feels each place _sing_ like they’re sparking against his fingers.

He sits up.

By the time Theo finishes stirring, and turning onto his side to look at Liam curiously, his eyes still muzzy with sleep, Liam has his knees up under the covers and his elbows braced on top of them, his hands covering his face. “Hey,” Theo murmurs, and reaches for him, but Liam doesn’t let Theo pull his hands away, just rocks his whole body with the gentle tugs until Theo gives up, and stops. He sits up, too. 

“Liam,” he tries. “Hey, c’mon. Talk to me.”

But Liam just laughs, hoarse and a little hysterical. “I have spent,” he tells Theo through his muffling palms, “the last twenty-four hours grieving for you, being absolutely terrified for you, and so fucking _angry_ with you that if you’d been in front of me and it wouldn’t, you know, have probably been the thing to tip you right into that grave you were hovering above, I would have wrung your goddamn neck myself.”

He drops his hands, and meets Theo’s stunned expression head-on.

“I will do,” he concludes, “whatever the fuck I want.”

Theo doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, and then he swallows, and says, “That’s fair,” very quietly; gingerly.

 _I don’t care if it’s fair_ , Liam nearly snaps, but. But he’s made his point. He looks away from Theo, and out into the middle distance of the dark of Theo’s loft.

Theo doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself. He keeps shifting to the side like he’s going to shift _away_ , before almost immediately shifting _back_ ; like he doesn’t want to be—like he can’t bring himself to be—that far away. Liam lets him suffer, feeling a little pettily satisfied. 

“I’m going to ask you something,” Liam finally says, “and I swear to god, if you lie to me, or try to be clever—”

“I won’t,” Theo interrupts, almost too quick. His lips flicker up when Liam glances at him. “I won’t,” he repeats. “I swear.”

Liam looks steadily at him, searching his face. Theo lets him, though Liam can tell it’s costing him to stay still under the attention. Finally Liam sucks in a deep breath, and exhales it back out, and as the last of it leaves his lungs, he asks, “Could you have gotten out?”

Theo stares at him. His mouth opens and shuts a few times, and then he looks away, the fingers of one hand twisting in the bedspread. Liam watches the side of his face—watches the way his eyelashes brush the curve of his cheek—and waits.

Finally, Theo pulls his lips between his teeth, and bites down hard enough to push all the blood out of them, and then releases them on the smallest of sighs as he says, “No.”

Liam stares. 

Theo must catch the look on his face because he grimaces, and looks away again. “I know in comparison to how I must have,” he stutters, a bit, “how I must have looked after the—the mistletoe,” they both wince, “that _wolfsbane poisoning_ must seem pretty tame, but, Liam…” 

He trails off, and twists his head to look at Liam again.

“I was more than half-dead by the time I got Alec and Mason and Nolan to my truck. I should have,” he hesitates, and he sounds genuinely stumped, “I should have died long before I got to her. I really don’t understand _how_ I made it to Monroe, at all,” he concludes softly, and like he’s only now just realizing this for himself, too.

And maybe Theo doesn’t understand, but Liam thinks he might.

“You didn’t want to die,” he finds himself saying. Theo looks sharply at him, but Liam—there’s something warm and sure and certain blooming in his chest and so he just smiles, helplessly, and says again, “You didn’t want to die.”

Theo stares at him, his eyes narrowing. “I know,” he finally says. “I told you that, earlier. But that doesn’t explain how—”

But Liam just surges into him, cutting him off. Theo isn’t prepared for it and they overbalance almost immediately, and because Liam had already pressed his mouth to Theo’s it means that when they hit the mattress their teeth _clack_. But Liam just laughs and presses forward harder against Theo, kissing him harder. Theo makes a soft, surprised noise but kisses him back, his arms coming up to wrap around Liam’s shoulders as Liam shifts to more fully cover him, shoulders to chest to hip to thigh. 

When Liam finally pulls back, Theo’s eyes are glazed, and his mouth is wet as he pants, his eyes following Liam’s as he raises up. 

“I think it does,” Liam tells him, and can see first the confusion on Theo’s face, and then the way his expression softens when he remembers. Liam kisses him again, can’t stop himself, and doesn’t want to, his knees on either side of Theo’s hips and Theo’s hands on his thighs. “I think it does,” he whispers again against Theo’s lips, and grins when Theo _shudders_ at the sensation.

“Okay,” Theo agrees, like a secret; like a promise. “Okay, then it does,” he says, and grins against Liam’s mouth when Liam grins against his. 

**Author's Note:**

> All feedback loved! If you liked, please consider a comment or a [reblog](https://eneiryu.tumblr.com/post/616414453108555776/come-on-come-up-said-the-swallow-to-the-sky)!


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